The Impact of Personal Response Systems on Students' Learning Performance

Personal response systems (PRSs) are prevalent across a range of educational settings, and this increasing importance has prompted many researchers to examine their various aspects. Their effects on students' learning performance have three main categories of antecedents: the learners' characteristics, the instructors' characteristics, and other contextual factors. A theoretical model is developed on the effects of PRSs on students' learning performance. This chapter describes the characteristics of PRSs, reviews their advantages and disadvantages, and proposes a theoretical model of their antecedents on students' learning performance. It concludes by exploring research implications and directions for future PRS research.

The Secret Agent Society

In recent years, there has been a worldwide commitment to integrating technology into classrooms to train students in the computer skills they will need to be workforce ready. This chapter provides an overview of the Secret Agent Society – Whole of Class Project: a randomized controlled trial of a gaming-based social skills training curriculum that was conducted in Grade 5 classrooms throughout Australia. The chapter explores the content, structure, and delivery format of the social skills program, together with the design and implementation of an online teacher training course to accompany it. Teacher feedback on the online teacher training course is presented, together with recommendations for enhancing the design, implementation, and evaluation of future online professional development courses for school staff.

TLC for MOOCS

This chapter reports on efforts to create a sustainable model to increase engagement, success, and retention in a MOOC for learning computer programming, for a U.S.-based national vocational program. In 2014, the training organization was one a few national and regional organizations who were awarded scholarships by a telecommunication's company to participate in a MOOC whose curriculum was informed and designed by multinational corporations to try and address the dearth of young computer programming talent. The vocational training program aimed to convert MOOC registrations into active and supported participation, with a view to increase completion. Theoretical frameworks were employed to ramp up knowledge of an unknown subject area and skill. Social connectedness methods were used to create teaching and learning communities (TLC) of support. Key results allowed the organization's trainees to outperform all other participating organizations. Resulting in the organization being awarded 500 more scholarships for computer programming that could be used over a three-year period.

Conceptualizing Experiential Learning for Computer-Mediated Engagement

This chapter aims to equip readers with a conceptual understanding to help them leverage experience-based learning in electronic (e) and mobile (m) learning environments. We are in times where learning goals needs to cater to increasingly complex scenarios that require non-didactic methods. Experiential learning emerges as a promising way to deliver such outcomes. David Kolb's experiential learning model emerges as a popular model to conceptualize such learning. E-learning and m-learning cater to the needs of an increasingly mobile learner who seeks situated and personalized learning. There is a need to incorporate experiential features in e/m-learning in a workplace informed manner. The authors weave the learnings from a pilot research and from real world examples to conceptualize a model of experiential learning for e/m-learning environments. The purpose of the models is to help learners critically evaluate other learning applications in digital environments or even design their own.

mClass Planet of the Apps

This chapter introduces how mobile devices can be used on a personal and macro level for professional development. The chapter also covers theories posited for practical applications from pedagogy and andragogy perspectives. There are multiple layers of considerations in terms of context, content, and collaboration factors to optimize mobile learning. There are more mobile devices in the world than people, and more than three quarters of the world's population already has some type of mobile phone, making it the most wide-spread technology and most common electronic device in people's hands. Un-tapping this ubiquitous technology creates a wide array of educational possibilities. Hence, a mobile first learning design is crucial in organizational leadership and professional development, to help bridge the gap between personal lives, schools, colleges, and the workplace. Furthering the concept of learning is everywhere as a natural segue for ownership of learning and engagement.

Virtual, Augmented and Mobile Learning in Health Education

Currently, technology is used for various purposes in every aspect of life. One of these areas is the field of education, which has an important role in advancing the technologies. Educators often desire to concentrate on their own courses or fields. However, the changing perception of the students and the technologies they are interested in are necessitating educators to follow technological innovations and developments in instructional technologies. The objective of this chapter is to attract attention to some of the global virtual, augmented, and mobile applications that are currently utilized within the medical learning arena. The authors also address technologies that aim to train human resources in health and other fields. The chapter illuminates the use of virtual, augmented, and mobile learning environments via their use in health education.

Plugged In

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter movements, protest has become the default response to social problems. As students and youth become more involved in political upheaval, they turn to the technology that surrounds them. This chapter focuses on computer-mediated youth civic action and interaction. It examines past trends in youth activism and how social media skills acquired through activism could help these same youth activists transition to the workforce.

Integrating Learning Into Work

In this chapter, the authors argue for designing the context, not just the technology, of e-learning simulations (eSims). They examine the limitations of “pure” eSims (i.e., not involving human-delivered feedback) in light of design challenges for informal learning, and learning transfer, in today's knowledge-intensive work environment when solutions call for creative responses to messy, non-structured tasks in different organizational contexts. Authentic learning on realistic tasks is needed in the design of eSims in such situations. Neaman describes ways that directed performance support (DPS), an approach he pioneered, helps to overcome such limitations. He identifies a core set of DPS guidelines that others can use to adapt and utilize DPS designs in their eSimS. Using a system dynamics framework, Marsick discusses organizational barriers and supports that also need to be considered in eSim learning design for effective engagement and learning transfer.

A Roadmap for Developing Computer-Mediated Solutions for Situated Workforce Learning

With perceptual capabilities, computers can intelligently function as a part of our everyday lives, helping us to make sense of what is happening and joining in with us as we experience and navigate through many different types of situations. In this way, computing systems can be situated when they combine machine perception with background knowledge to observe, explore, and interpret human and environmental activity in a way that supports decision making. Many of the current, prominent situated computing solutions are consumer-focused in nature. But these systems will, in time, change the way we work as well as how we learn. Many disciplines are adapting and changing in the process, and many opportunities remain, including the use of situated computing systems for workforce education. There are many opportunities to innovate and improve workforce education by leveraging the power and affordances of mobile-device technology to turn everyday situations into everyday learning opportunities.

Investigation Into the Selection of Online Learning Platforms and Tools in Higher Education

Selecting and implementing the platforms and tools to support online learning effectively in higher education is currently a challenge for which there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Finding the right balance between supporting strong pedagogy, offering training and support, providing data security and privacy, ensuring ease of use, among other factors, shape the decisions that leaders in higher education make as they develop and implement online learning environments. This chapter explores the results of a study conducted during the Fall of 2016 to better understand the efforts higher education experts undergo to develop online learning environments. The study considers the sometimes-competing pedagogical and pragmatic needs such efforts entail and seeks to identify trends and best practices.